Sunday, January 13, 2008

Project of the Month

This past week I started a project on the attic cubby. This cubby has been my music room but I have never been very comfortable up there. That being the case, I never spent much time up there. Since getting in to grad school it was determined that this would be my study. This room would also act as a guest room for when family comes to visit (note the use of the word "when" rather than "if"). Because of this latter reason, Rachel wanted to have the room re-carpeted including the stairs leading up to it. This room hasn't been touched since 1970 or before. As I am sure many of you are aware, with projects, one thing leads to another. Rachel said, "I want new carpet." To which I say, "if we are going to do the carpet we should vault the ceiling." Rachel then says, "we should do the walls too." After some calculations, the walls would be too much money. So we are redoing the ceiling first and then the carpet. FYI. The ceiling in the following photos looks much higher than it is. The door in the pictures is a small sized door and the ceiling is about 3 inches above the top of that. That means that the ceiling is about 6'4" or so.The following are panoramic views of the two halves of the room before.

Here is the room after two nights of cleaning and ripping up the carpet.

Yesterday I spent a good 5 hours ripping out the sheet rock and insulation and now I am left with this:

There were about 15 minutes when I was half way through the sheet rock that I had a bit of a panic attack that I was in over my head, mostly because there are so many more wires than I expected. But then I prayed and also thought about how I would not use the room if this didn't happen. With some help from Carl during cleanup we got all of the sheet rock, plaster and insulation into trash bags, which I will be putting to the curb every week for many weeks.Next step is taking down the cross section pieces of wood you see in the last two pictures.Wish me luck.

1 comment:

Wow! You guys are tenacious. The thought of ripping into walls and vaulting ceilings sends a shiver of terror through me...

well, that might be because we're renting. :) And adobe brick probably isn't quite as forgiving. Good luck with the vaulting; you're definitely gonna have to post some pictures. Is the carpet for the warmth factor? I think hardwood floors are the prettiest, and that's such a... hardwood.... room. Anyway, good for you.